{"id":8889,"date":"2021-03-10T08:01:00","date_gmt":"2021-03-10T14:01:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.jfbelievers.com\/?p=8889"},"modified":"2021-03-10T08:01:00","modified_gmt":"2021-03-10T14:01:00","slug":"the-voices-in-your-head","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.jfbduluth.com\/index.php\/2021\/03\/10\/the-voices-in-your-head\/","title":{"rendered":"THE VOICES IN YOUR HEAD"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The devil is a busy one. He doesn\u2019t have a lot of time to spend on any particular individual. If a quick conversation with a na\u00efve woman (Gen. 3:1-5) or an evening spent inside of a betrayer (Luke 22:3) isn\u2019t enough to get the job done, he\u2019ll move along to more fruitful fields. He didn\u2019t even give Jesus<\/em> (of all people) more than 40 days of his time. He\u2019s got heaps of work to do. That\u2019s why he’s got a reputation for fleeing those who resist him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That doesn\u2019t mean, however, that there won\u2019t be any harmful \u2018side-effects\u2019 to deal with after he leaves. His interactions, as brief as they might be, have long lasting side-effects (as was the case with Eve and with Judas both). Even if you survive the attack, he\u2019ll always do what he can to get the most \u201cbang for his buck\u201d. No one targeted by the spiritual forces of evil in this dark world should expect to recover immediately. \u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

YOU\u2019VE HEARD OF JOB\u2026<\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n

Take, for example, Job<\/em>. Blameless & upright indeed. A man who feared God, shunned evil, and experienced his fair share of spiritual conflict. And, as is often the case with us, the spiritual<\/em> part of his warfare was momentary in comparison to what came next. His memoir is a lengthy 42 chapters, yet, the devil appears only as a brief cameo in the first two.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The devil wants you to curse God and die. And since he doesn’t have much time, he aims for efficiency<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

What follows is chapter upon chapter upon chapter of tense dialogue between a righteous man (desperately holding fast to his integrity) and the \u201cvoices\u201d of those closest to him. Friendly <\/em>voices which, by that point in his life, Job had grown to trust. If anyone could get his attention in a situation like that, it\u2019d be them. Those men were nearer to him than anybody else; even his own wife.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yet, his greatest challenge was in realizing that those familiar voices were WRONG! As much as he\u2019d trusted them in the past, he\u2019d better be careful now, for they were no longer speaking the complete truth. These \u201cvoices\u201d had as much potential to destroy Job as the devil himself did. Should he listen to them, he would ultimately lose the battle, even after having survived the initial assaults of Satan.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It isn\u2019t the devil himself that defeats most people, it\u2019s usually the \u201cvoices\u201d they listen to after he’s done with the attack.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

YOU\u2019VE HEARD THESE VOICES\u2026<\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n

We all have voices in our head. It\u2019s a psychological phenomenon called \u201cinternal dialogue<\/em>\u201d. Not to be confused with auditory hallucinations, our \u201cinner voice<\/em>\u201d is a normal part of our brain function. Most everybody experiences this to some degree. And like Job\u2019s buddies, the voices in our head talk whether you invite them to or not. They\u2019re always quick with accusations and opinions when things take an ugly turn. And they\u2019re never as loyal as you might believe. They\u2019ll let you think they\u2019re always your allies, but if you listen carefully to what they say, you\u2019ll discern that they sometimes sound like the enemy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It’s unlikely that you’ve got any friends named Bildad, Eliphaz, or Zophar, but we all have \u201cinner voices<\/em>\u201d which are nearly impossible to ignore. When something sends you into a spiritual tizzy, these guys will come out of nowhere with all kinds of ungodly opinions & half-accurate counsel. They always speak the loudest when we\u2019re at our lowest, and it\u2019s hard to know whether we should believe them or not. They’re so articulate, so believable, and so very dear to us. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

It isn’t the devil himself that defeats most people… it’s usually the “voices” they listen to after he’s done with the attack<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

We need to be careful. Some of us allow our \u201cinner dialogue\u201d too much of a \u201cvoice\u201d. They don\u2019t always know what they\u2019re talking about, and the longer we let them speak, the more convincing they become. Like Job, we need to know how and when to answer them. We need to put an end to their ranting. Had he not done that, Job would not have survived his ordeal. Neither will you.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

YOU\u2019VE HEARD THE WARNING\u2026<\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n

You may never find yourself covered in boils, and you probably won\u2019t lose your camels to the Chaldeans, but one thing is certain: The devil wants you to curse God and die<\/em>. And since he doesn\u2019t have much time, he he aims for efficiency. He\u2019ll do just enough to unleash the voices in your head. If a slight offense is enough to trigger that conversation, he\u2019ll leave it at that. If it takes a little more, he\u2019ll probably give it a shot. But if he can\u2019t remove you from God\u2019s service with an all-out spiritual attack, he\u2019s always happy to watch you do it yourself after you\u2019ve talked it over with your so-called \u201cfriends\u201d. \u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Job has much to teach us, not only about how to remain blameless & upright when the devil intrudes, but how to make sense of the voices in your head after he flees. His biography is a prototype for the spiritual warfare you and I are in for.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hold fast to your integrity.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The devil is a busy one. He doesn\u2019t have a lot of time to spend on any particular individual. If a quick conversation with a na\u00efve woman (Gen. 3:1-5) or an evening spent inside of a betrayer (Luke 22:3) isn\u2019t enough to get the job done, he\u2019ll move along to more fruitful fields. He didn\u2019t … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":8890,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8889","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-pastors-notes"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.jfbduluth.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8889","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.jfbduluth.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.jfbduluth.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.jfbduluth.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.jfbduluth.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8889"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.jfbduluth.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8889\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.jfbduluth.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8890"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.jfbduluth.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8889"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.jfbduluth.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8889"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.jfbduluth.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8889"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}